Prelude - The Story Of My Life

Facebook has documented most of my religious journey from a pudgy little Matthew Ha, strutting around church like I own the place because everyone in church knows either myself or my parents, to where I am now. When I first got facebook before my first year of college, I think I was just "Christian". Two years later, I had changed my religious views to say, "Creation-Sin-Redemption", reflective of my frustration and weariness of wandering around lost in Gordon College, a veritable intellectual agora of competing Christian beliefs, and betraying my desperate longing to belong to a transcendent meta-narrative that explained my life, no matter how insignificant I was made out to be. A year later, my religious status once again changed to say, "Reluctant reformed evangelical Christian". God had my hand and was finally leading me out of the crowds. I was starting to realize what I truly believed but the realization was lined with an edge of wariness and a reluctance to admit that I had become a kind of person I had previously contemped. As I left Gordon College, I changed my religious status to say, "Rationally-reflecting reformed evangelical Christian" and to this day, I joyfully and unashamedly embrace that label.

The year of 2010 has, without a doubt, been the most transformative year in my entire life. I almost see this year and the next one as the final chapter of my bildungsroman and the rest of my life as simply the epilogue; the "and he lived happily ever after" portion of my story. At the beginning of the year, there were only two things that I held in my heart as essential to my identity and one fell away, revealing who I truly am. Today, I am no longer an incorrigible New Yorker, but I am definitely an incorrigible reformed evangelical, gospel-centered, Bible-authoritative Christian. Over the next few weeks or months, I wish to chronicle my faith journey and how I got to where I am.

Comments

  1. UnknownDecember 28, 2010 at 11:57 PM

    I dig the Matthew Ha reference and I look forward to the Chronicles
    Of Danshih

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you first have to invent the universe

Draper sent me this link: http://melindataub.com/god-twitters-creation/ and it reminded me of a lofty thought I had while I was taking a physics class over the summer. It is called: How to create the universe in infinity easy steps 1) Create light. 2) Back up a second, you have to invent the concept of creation. 3) You can't back up without first explaining the concept of progress and sequence 4) But you can't have sequence without first setting in place the skeleton of sequence, which is time! 5) Okay, okay, it's clear what we need to do first is invent time. 6) Wait, what do you mean by "first"? 7) First is like, what takes place all the way on one end of the timeline; the end marked "beginning" 8) Alright, seriously, we're getting nowhere with this. If we want to invent time, let's just start by inventing numbers. 9) One.... 10) Two... 11) Three... 12) Quick question, if we haven't got sequence yet, is this happening all at once? 13) Yes, ...
Read more

A Brief Theology Of Clothing And Fashion

          A couple of weeks ago, I turned up at church wearing the new outfit that I had purchased back in New York last December. Blue dress shirt with a Navy Tommy Hilfiger top, DKNY jeans, and a pair of Polo Ralph Lauren boots. That was the first time in a long, long, long, long time that I can remember being complimented for my clothing. No fewer than three people responded with some variation of "Dan! Nice shoes!" when I said hi to them, and Roy Wu actually saw me from across the whole hall and came over just to comment on my attire. It felt nice. It made me smile. It confirmed that I like it when I wear nice clothing and people notice.           Truth be told, I didn't acquire a single article of clothing that I was wearing that day on my own. My fiancee Jo picked out the shirt and jumper, I was assisted with the jeans, and my friend Phil Thai practically had to hold a gun to my head to make me buy those nice brown shoes. "But, wh...
Read more

The Stanley Files - On Priority

[ and we know, new jack city gotta keep my brother but to be number one, i'ma beat my brother -Kanye, Big Brother I've redacted my last post "On Pain" and the one on "Diligence" and have decided to work them into a 5-part series of posts inspired largely by the thoughts of my dear friend and mentor. ] when it feels like livin's harder than dyin for me givin up is way harder than tryin -Kanye, Champion A few weeks ago I wrote an entry in which I quoted Stan; "The euangelion for me is that anyone can be better with nothing more than diligence". I have since added to my understanding. I was in Sydney city today meeting up with a couple of Gracepoint guys. As I walked down the street, I could have scanned over the street signs and ignored the cars driving on the wrong side and imagine myself back at home walking down Wall Street. "Power suit, power tie, power steering." The well-dressed men and women that passed me all exuded determi...
Read more